Richard North Patterson (in Berkeley, California) is an American fiction writer and political commentator. He is a 1971 graduate of the Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law, and a recipient of that University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Alumni and its President’s Award for Excellence. He has served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Ohio; a trial attorney for the Securities & Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C.; and was the SEC’s liaison to the Watergate Special Prosecutor. - Wikipedia He has written more than 20 novels, with the most recent one, Eden In Winter (2014), marking his retirement as a novelist.